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BW 7 suggestion

They were very complimentary of BibleWorks, however, they made one observation that I have seen in several other reviews and articles concerning BibleWorks interface:

"While some features of BibleWorks are pretty easy to use, the idiosyncratic interface is hard to master, and hard to remember. Only those who use the tool very frequently acquire the skill necessary to truly benefit from the advanced capabilities in BibleWorks."

I would like to suggest that BW 7 include not only additional tools, resources etc, but possibly a new user interface. I think a discussion of interface suggestions may be useful. I apologize if this issue has already been raised and I missed it.

Here are a few items for consideration:

1. Consolidation and organization of the button bar and menu for a cleaner and easier interface.
2. Move non-biblical texts into a format other than a help file and allow for better integration with the Biblical text and search tools.
3. Develop a tab system when multiple windows are open, and consistency in how different resource windows are setup. Here is another review from BW's website: "BWk’s resources are inconsistent in both their interfaces (confusing the user) and their preparation." http://www.bibleworks.com/reviews/re...arunak2005.htm

The folks at BW are incredibly responsive to their customers. Perhaps some suggestions here would assist them in consideration of interface changes and improvement.

They were very complimentary of BibleWorks, however, they made one observation that I have seen in several other reviews and articles concerning BibleWorks interface:

"While some features of BibleWorks are pretty easy to use, the idiosyncratic interface is hard to master, and hard to remember. Only those who use the tool very frequently acquire the skill necessary to truly benefit from the advanced capabilities in BibleWorks."

I would like to suggest that BW 7 include not only additional tools, resources etc, but possibly a new user interface. I think a discussion of interface suggestions may be useful. I apologize if this issue has already been raised and I missed it.

Here are a few items for consideration:

1. Consolidation and organization of the button bar and menu for a cleaner and easier interface.
2. Move non-biblical texts into a format other than a help file and allow for better integration with the Biblical text and search tools.
3. Develop a tab system when multiple windows are open, and consistency in how different resource windows are setup. Here is another review from BW's website: "BWk’s resources are inconsistent in both their interfaces (confusing the user) and their preparation." http://www.bibleworks.com/reviews/re...arunak2005.htm

The folks at BW are incredibly responsive to their customers. Perhaps some suggestions here would assist them in consideration of interface changes and improvement.

John Fidel

The tab suggestion is exceedingly helpful, and would be more intuitive than the Clone Bibleworks feature. It would also be helpful to have search results open in a tab instead of overwriting the interface or opening a partial window. Often I am studying a passage, and want to do a search on a single word in that verse. It would be much better if my search opened up in a tab.

I would also suggest that the buttons are extremely useful (especially with tooltips). The problem is that you cannot fit all the advanced buttons on a single line (at least on most screens 1200x800 or smaller). One simple fix might be to have multiple buttons per spot. That is, have a button where to left click would be to Open the Lexicon Browser, to right Click would be to Open the Tischendorf, and to Middle Click would Open Matthew Henry. The best would be the ability to assign such buttons. This is exactly what the program Directory Opus does for the Windows format, and it is simple and powerful.

Could not agree MORE with your basic premise. Learning BW is harder than learning Hebrew.

GUI is good. Most other tools I've used, use it. Checkboxes for case, mood, number, position in sentence, etc. I looked at the witches' spells you have to learn to do the advanced stuff, gave it a poke, abandoned the effort in despair. If I can't do it with a . or a ', I don't do it -- and I've used BW for years.

I agree that GUI can be good, but it is not always. I, personally, absolutely love the fact that I don't have to click checkboxes and radio buttons to do advanced stuff. I can just hit F2, and type 3 extra characters. The command line is great and it is fast.

After all, there is the GSE for those more complicated searches and more visual representation.

I do agree about having a common format for non-biblical resources. It is a little strange that you cannot do CTRL+F to find within the lexicon. It is a little strange that Wallace's Grammar comes up in a windows help file and I can't jump to page numbers in BDAG.

Keep in mind that this is a pretty extensive change. We don't want Bibleworks to become a monster like Logos. One of the benefits of Bibleworks is its simplicity --> super quick speed.

I think that GUI elements can and should be improved, but that is not the strong point of Bibleworks.

When you try to make software do everything and do it well, you will end up with something that can do most things poorly. You have different tools for different purposes. What Bibleworks is meant to do, it does well. Everything else is icing, I think.

-Matt

Originally Posted by Dan Phillips

Could not agree MORE with your basic premise. Learning BW is harder than learning Hebrew.

GUI is good. Most other tools I've used, use it. Checkboxes for case, mood, number, position in sentence, etc. I looked at the witches' spells you have to learn to do the advanced stuff, gave it a poke, abandoned the effort in despair. If I can't do it with a . or a ', I don't do it -- and I've used BW for years.

Tab and navigation suggestion

Some minor tweak suggestions for the GUI:
1) The tabs in the Search panel are great... but instead of just having them numbered 1, 2, 3 etc, I would like them to be larger (could be in 2 or 3 rows) with an indication of what they are displaying. Ie, I'm working with the tabs a lot, and I can't remember if that reference to Text A I was saving is in which tab. (You can see I'm thinking of the kind of tab labeling available in the new IE or in Firefox)

2) The back/forward buttons at the top of the Search panel simply need to be bigger.